Devil in Amber by Gatiss Mark

Devil in Amber by Gatiss Mark

Author:Gatiss, Mark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK


‘Yet this was nothing compared to the frightful apparition hovering in the air beside me.’

14

Tuppence For A Bloater

Not wanting to waste a moment, I assumed a low crouch and scarpered, keeping out of sight of the men and their dogs, now little more than vague silhouettes on the horizon.

There wasn’t time to consider the insane events I had just witnessed. I could only thank my stars that Fate had granted me a chance of escape. Now I had to find proper shelter and food and give some thought to rescuing Aggie.

I rounded a kind of crescent-shaped outcrop that might once have been a harbour, though it was now silted up and choked with marsh grass. Slowing to a brisk walking pace, I almost immediately spied a structure projecting from the landscape like a broken tooth. Tarred and tumbledown, it had evidently been cannibalized from driftwood and resembled nothing so much as the ribcage of some fossilized giant of the Jurassic. In sharp contrast to this, the front door, salvaged, it seemed, from a luxurious Portuguese vessel, was of gorgeous teak and bore the legend Capitão in beautiful copperplate script. The door was slightly ajar and the somewhat overwhelming strains of Don Giovanni were blasting through it.

Tacked to the outside of the shack and swaying gently in the breeze were dozens of smoked fish glinting like gold leaf, woodsmoke swirling about them. My stomach cramped painfully and I realized, with a jolt, how utterly ravenous I was. Inhaling the bluey smoke until I felt my eyes beginning to sting, I let the music flood over me.

Worn out and ragged since that night in the Manhattan drugstore–how long ago?–it was no wonder I’d started seeing things. What next hove into view seemed merely one more part of my delirium.

There was no sign of life save for the sound of the scratchy gramophone and I was just reaching over for one of the smoked fish when the teak door flew open and an old, old woman came out. With my senses stunned to buggery, I thought she was a witch.

Bent almost double, she leant heavily upon a gnarled stick only a foot or so long, had virtually a full white beard of a rather frightful wispiness and a heavily tanned face resembling a long-perished fig. Her black bonnet, as crow-black as the rest of her apparel, was in the style of forty years back. She fixed me with eyes as moist and clouded as the sky.

‘Tuppence,’ she cawed, chewing gummily at her lips.

‘Pleased to meet you, Tuppence,’ I said with more gaiety than I felt. The crone stared at me. I coughed as the woodsmoke caught in my throat.

‘Bloaters is tuppence,’ insisted the contorted old thing in a strange Australian squawk. ‘I’m Mrs Croup,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Wanna come in?’

‘Madam, I could kiss you.’

She looked me up and down and gestured towards the teak door.

Introducing myself as Sal Volatile, lately of New York and now tramping about the countryside in search



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